Malawians Abroad

 

Successful, independent Malawians travelling abroad were key to the country's social and economic history in the 20th Century. From the late 1890s, migrants independently left Malawi in their thousands - travelling clandestinely outside the infrastucture of colonial states. .Independent African churches, set up by the likes of John Chilembwe who travelled beyond Malawi's borders provided important independent spaces in colonial Nyasaland. Money earned abroad was key to investments in commercial fishing, farming and localised industry. And finally, migrants provided key ideas and funds to Malawi's independence movements in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

Following the emergence of mining in South Africa, an initial trickle of emigrants in the 1890s had transformed into a mass phenomenon by the 1940s. In 1948, 40% of Malawi’s men were estimated to be abroad. The Forties and Fifties saw the experience of migration undergo remarkable change as labour offices opened, mechanised transport spread, and wages abroad increased.

 

This webiste forms part of a research project into the history of Malawians migrating to South Africa for an African Studies MSc at the University of Edinburgh. It also hopefully offers a forum discussing migration across Southern Africa, the means by which Malawians travelled abroad, and the continued legacy of migration to this day.

...being a man, he said we can’t just stay here and wait – I need to look for green pastures, for survival. My mother needs to eat, I need to eat, I need to dress – all these things.

Jimmy Banda, August 2012

 

We, the Malawians, are by nature and indication travellers. We like adventure...We like to wander

outside our country to see the world beyond our own borders – to work, to study, to do other things.

Dr Hastings Banda, May 1970

 

...they were not bound by anything else, no circumstance stopped them, they just went. No circumstance was big enough to stop them doing anything. And they achieved what they wanted to achieve.

Gilead Mtegha, June 2014